In a shared access network, for example, a broadband satellite network, users may connect to the Internet via a shared wireless channel and a network gateway. The shared network channel provides physical access to the network for a certain number of terminals, but has a limited capacity, for example, by certain spectrum, modulation and coding schemes. The network gateway performs tasks, such as, setting up connection, traffic management and quality of service (QoS) provisioning. The network gateway also has capacity limitations, for example, due to its processing capability.
In a conventional configuration of the shared access system, such as, a forward link stream of DVB-S2 channel, one access channel may be connected to several network gateways while a network gateway only connects to the one shared channel. In this system, user terminals sharing one access channel may be associated with different network gateways. Bandwidth allocation performs the task of assigning the channel capacity to individual network gateways based on the respective demand, for example, due to backlog. During congestion, when the shared channel cannot serve all the requested demand, the network gateway may push back user traffic back to the core network.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,929,217 and 8,705,357 disclose performing flow control and bandwidth allocation. However, these patents do not support an interconnected IPGW-CRO resource pool as described herein. Other prior arts, for example, bandwidth management for terminal groups, are for terminal groups with certain common features and do not do not support an interconnected IPGW-CRO resource pool as described herein.